Ten Dead Men (2008)

This article is in direct response to Atreyo Palit's Negative Reactions to ‘Barbie’ Reveal the Pressure of Representation. My intention is to explain what accusations of white feminism entail and show what a more nuanced response might look. I greatly respect my fellow Incluvie writer and friend.

Barbie is a billion dollar film that has set the cinematic world ablaze. There are nonsense "hot" takes aplenty: Barbie is apparently the harbinger of the end to the superhero film era, traditional masculinity, and "serious" filmmaking among other things. Suddenly the success of films that rely on brand recognition and marketing aren't "real" successes, but films riding on an actor's star power or director's prestige are apparently A-OK! There are also those who seem to suddenly have developed false meritocracy and decided that a film grossing a billion dollars is proof positive of its technical mastery. I say all this to say that nonsense critiques motivated by powerful concoctions of ignorance and political motivations come with the territory of predatory capitalism, the Dunning-Kruger effect, and patriarchy.